Ohalos, Chapter 7, Mishnah 6. Our mishnah returns to the case of a woman who is in the midst of childbirth and whose labor has become dangerous. The mishnah does not discuss a pleasant subject, but it lays down one of the foundational rulings in all of halachah about how we weigh one life against another, and it is stated here with complete clarity.
The case before us is termed "Isha shemaksha leileid": labor that has grown so hard that the mother's own survival now hangs in the balance. In such circumstances the mishnah rules that her rescue overrides everything, including the child still within her. The wording is unsparing: "mechatchin es havlad beme'eha umotzi'in oso eivarim eivarim", the fetus is severed while inside the womb and taken out piece by piece, so that the delivery is halted and the mother survives. The justification is stated in a few words: "mipnei shechayeha kodmin lechayav", priority belongs to her life over that of one who has not yet come into the world.
Why this should be permitted needs precision. The whole permit rests on one factor alone: sakanas nefashos, genuine mortal danger to the mother. Absent such danger, nobody would have the slightest right to harm an unborn child. It is only where Hashgachah has closed off every other path, and the alternative is between a mother who is alive before us and a child not yet born, that halachah instructs us to preserve the mother, though the unborn child is lost thereby.
Once Most of the Child Has Emerged
Then comes the boundary. The mishnah says "yatza rubo": should the greater part of the baby's body already be outside, or, as halachah defines it, the greater part of the head, the entire ruling flips. Now the instruction is "ein nog'in bo", hands off him. From that moment he may not be injured in any way, since each of the two is regarded as a living person, and "she'ein dochin nefesh mipnei nefesh", no life may be shunted aside to make room for another. There is no reckoning by which one human being may be taken in order to rescue a second.
These are among the most complicated halachos there are, and the surrounding sugyos show just how carefully the Rishonim and Acharonim weighed them.
Sheva ben Bichri and the City of Aveilah
Among the sugyos brought alongside our mishnah is the incident involving Sheva ben Bichri. Once Avshalom, the son of Dovid Hamelech, had risen against his father, Sheva ben Bichri undertook to carry that revolt forward. He assembled around himself a crowd of empty men and marched against Dovid Hamelech, intending to kill him and take the throne for himself. Large numbers he never won over, but some he did: a few bought with money, a few lured by promises of high position.
Yoav, Dovid's general, came out with soldiers to seize him, and Sheva ben Bichri fled and hid in a city called Aveilah. Yoav laid siege to the city and had a great tower of stones built up alongside the wall. The plan was to climb it and shoot down into the city from above, in order to force the inhabitants to open the gates.
Living in Aveilah was a woman of great wisdom, and she was Serach bas Asher, a granddaughter of Yaakov Avinu. Her years were remarkably many, and this arichas yamim was hers as the fruit of the berachah she received from Yaakov Avinu at the moment she brought him word that Yosef was alive and ruling over Mitzrayim. Serach positioned herself at the city's entrance and called up to Yoav: how can you set aside what the Torah teaches, that a war may not be opened before terms of peace have first been offered? Yoav asked who was addressing him, and the answer came back that this was Serach, Asher's daughter, a granddaughter of Yaakov Avinu.
Yoav gave her a straight reply: the man sheltering in your city is Sheva ben Bichri, and he has revolted against the king. Deliver him up, and your city will be left untouched.
The townspeople wavered. It seems they thought of him as a friend, and beyond that they had a genuine halachic problem. Refusal meant that Yoav would storm the entire city. But may a person rescue himself by handing over someone else to death? Serach bas Asher issued the ruling for them: given that the alternative was an assault on all the inhabitants, it was permitted. They took hold of Sheva ben Bichri and cast him from the wall down to Yoav's camp.
The Mishnah in Terumos
This calls to mind a mishnah in Maseches Terumos. If a band comes to a group of ten Yidden and says, hand over one of you, choose whichever one you like, and if not we will kill all of you, they may not select one man and tell him to go out. But if the demand is for a specific person, hand over so and so, and if not we will kill all of you, then it is permitted.
Yet Maseches Makkos records an episode that adds a further dimension. A fugitive once hid himself in the town of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi. Soldiers of the government encircled the place and announced that unless the man was surrendered, every resident would be killed. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi decided the matter according to the halachah: because they had asked for one named individual, the man should be persuaded to give himself up. From then on Eliyahu Hanavi no longer appeared to him. When he eventually inquired about it, Eliyahu challenged him: is it for you to be handing a man over? He responded that the halachah is precisely so, for a named person may be surrendered, and the prohibition applies only when the demand is for any one of the group. Eliyahu's reply was that someone on his level ought to have acted beyond the strict law and refused, permitted though it was.
Makkos preserves a comparable account. A lion once killed a man at a distance of three parsa'os from the place where Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi was staying, and for three days Eliyahu Hanavi withheld his conversation from him, since he ought to have been davening that such a thing should not happen.
Reconciling the Sugyos
How, then, do our mishnah and the account of Sheva ben Bichri fit together? Our mishnah rules that from a certain point onward the child may not be touched, notwithstanding that he places his mother in mortal danger. The common explanation is that Sheva ben Bichri had already made himself chayav misah by rebelling against the king, and for that reason the residents of Aveilah were entitled to seize him and surrender him, since his life was forfeit in any event. Look at this in the Tosfos Yom Tov here, who cites the sugya in Maseches Sanhedrin.
A Shailah from the Camps
There exists a sefer titled Mekadshei Hashem, authored by Rav Meisels, the Veitzener Rav, in which he set down the shailos that people brought before him during his years of imprisonment in the camps. Here is one of them.
A father approached him. His only son had been placed together with a group of other children in a room off to the side. The previous day the Germans had amused themselves with one of their cruelties: a bar was fixed at a certain height, the children were ordered to leap up and touch it, and any child who failed would be killed. A number of them could not manage it, and they were shut into that room, with the announcement that at daybreak they would be shot.
Among these fathers was one who had kept a diamond concealed between his toes, and he proposed it to a guard as payment for setting his child free. The guard told him this posed no problem whatsoever: he would simply take hold of a different child. The father asked him to explain. The Germans, said the guard, keep a count and know exactly how many children are inside. Were one boy to walk out with nobody filling his place, the guard's own life would be forfeit. So he would grab some other child and shove him in.
The color drained from the father's face, and he brought the Veitzener Rav his question: may I pay off the guard, knowing that another child will be dragged in to replace my son? The Rav told him that such a shailah was beyond him. He had no sefarim available and no colleagues in Torah with whom to weigh it. The father pushed further: so the Rav has no heter to give me? The Rav replied that he was neither declaring it permitted nor declaring it forbidden. Then, said the father, there is no heter, and I will refrain. My son shall not be rescued at the price of another child. And that is what happened. He left his son where he was.
The Veitzener Rav writes that from then on he was unable to meet that father's eyes. What could a person possibly say to him? The father himself seemed altogether at peace. His words were these: Avraham Avinu bound his son upon the Akeidah and then lifted him off it; my own son lay bound there too, and I left him there, for I had received no heter to release him.
May Hashem help us that we merit the Geulah Sheleimah and techiyas hameisim, and that we never, chas veshalom, have to face such shailos lema'aseh.